Gmail's iPhone/Android-optimized webapp is nearly as good as a mail client, but not if you keep multi-multi-message threads near the top of your queue. One blogger saw a nearly 7-second decrease in loading time after killing one seemingly endless chain.

The Just Another iPhone Blog saw his webapp refreshes crawl to an average of about 10 seconds from the 2-3 second norm he was used to over 3G service. The culprit? A really long email chain (40 messages) about various post drafts.

Once I archived that conversation my Gmail web app was back to being spry and reactive, with a renewed refresh rate of about two seconds. So I guess the moral of the story for heavy Gmail users is to clear your inbox of huge e-mails…or maybe just don't talk so bloody much under the same subject header. ;)

Sage advice in any email client, but very relevant for mobile users wondering why their speeds seem so different from day to day.